Saturday, 26 May 2012

Remember the Pagan Reading Challenge I signed up for?(For info – click on the little pic at the
side of the blog of a maiden reading beneath a tree.)This is how its going so far, since January –
what I’ve read this year that’s relevant to it.(I’m in the middle of many more books, pagan and non-pagan, as usual,
but the only ones I list are ones I have actually finished with.)

Forgive me while I get a bit nerdy and categorize them for you:

Fluffage – as in,
related to serious topics, but done in a very ‘we must sell this book by the
thousands!’ kind of way

Goddess Signs,
by Angelica Danton
(A nice idea, to mix the Chinese astrology with Western, and to add
goddesses.But it didn’t work for
me.I didn’t feel exclusively or
only like my designation – a Metal Pig, a Protectoress Goddess, like Demeter,
a Mother.Its just one part of
me.The learning resonated, but
nothing else.A seller.)

Llewellyn’s
2011 Witches Companion
(Some trash *and* some very good thoughts – notably the one about wealth
by Calanteriel: comfort, freedom, security – an interesting system for
thinking about money, how to approach it, identified. And the section on your own fairy tale
story, as a useful tool, that really appealed to me.)

Ghost Stories (always deserving of a category of their own)

The Winter Ghosts,
by Kate Mosse
(A very nice idea that would have been a wicked good short story.But was ruined by being self indulgent,
overly long and oh my god so
badly written; all portentous in the wrong places etc.Dreadful. I hate to say that about any book - but I could see how truly wonderful it could have been. I hope other people liked it.)

Hecate: Keys to the Crossroads,
edited by Sorita d-Este
(Some very interesting stuff in here.A very friendly book, on the whole, about a rather scary seeming
goddess.Some awful bits too – I
think it was the essay by one contributor where she slavishly talked about
the ‘high born’ Hekate that really put me off.I can’t relate to the gods as if they
are so much better than me.That
probably sounds odd.I can’t be
dealing with entities in a way that suggests they would be doing me a
great favour by simply noticing my existence, let alone interacting with
me, or helping me.I prefer to
think of it as making friends with someone from a different culture:
carefully done, with sensitivity; but both on the same level, just
offering different things to the relationship.David Rankine’s essay made her sound
very scary, too.The book didn’t
manage to explain why so many people find her so much the be all and end
all of goddesses.I found that a
bit strange.But I am sufficiently
interested to read more; and have a nice satisfying looking reading list
to be getting on with.)

One Book Primers on esoteric subjects

Essential Asatru,
by Diana L. Paxson
(Now – here was a book where the gods were treated as “friends and
allies”, and toasted, not fawned on.And I have started working with some of these gods – Thor, Odin,
Frigga, etc – they all sounded wonderful, and friendly.I really enjoyed this book, and seem to
be having a real almost obsessive THING for the Norse gods and myths at
the moment.Am talking about it all
with an Asatru follower on FB – who also has a most brilliant blog, here
it be: http://ryansdesk.blogspot.co.uk/.He has humour, a certain force and
authority to his words – and that thing prized highly in these circles: a
grasp of the lore and an ability to quote and do the homework.I actually fit in quite well with this
mentality.I shall borrow
some.The author of the book, to
get back to the point, worked with
Marion Zimmer Bradley for a long while; that was where I first knew her
name from; she co-authored some of the later books.A fine fiction writer as well as an
explainer of this strand of paganism.)

Pagan and/or Magically based Fiction

Moondance of Stonewylde,
by Kit Berry
(I enjoyed this a lot more than the first book.Magus is still a terrible character,
getting oddly more cartoon villain and yet real at the same time, as is
Clip becoming more the ‘worm’ of Yul’s trip-vision.There was less outright suffering to
make me miserable in this book.Sylvie’s suffering was real, but was offset by Yul’s strength and
growth in respect and understanding of his destiny– you felt challenges
would be coped with, hard, but met.Him running around the stones touching them each as he went until he
drew a storm, to stop Magus feeding on Sylvie’s moon magic was tearful and
memorable.There were some
brilliant characters in this one – Professor Siskin, and Old Violet.What is Kit Berry’s obsession with old
women that are outrageously ugly, have claw fingers and all smell so bad???!Very odd.But I loved this one and can’t wait till
the next; which luckily I have on the bookshelf…glad Buzz was disposed
of.Can’t wait for Jackdaw to be
got rid of too.)

Solstice at Stonewylde,
by Kit Berry
(Read all in one day, almost hallucinogenically, while laying in bed with
a stinking cold and feeling dead in the body, but the brain was still
moving in curious neon circles.Jackdaw got well and truly disposed of in this one.As did Magus, in the most un-action
action scene.She managed to make
it like a repeating pattern, happening but also happened many times
before.Professor Siskin came home
for good; Mother Heggy understood the meaning of the fifth candle…and
Sylvie had a windey time in this instalment, but came good in the
end.Miranda saw the light; and Yul
became the beginning of what he needs to be.This was so good I’m scared the next may
not be as great.Because Stonewylde
needs to be a place where good wins out.But I think Kit Berry knows that.)

Book of Moons, by Rosemary Edgehill(Another good Bast novel, one of the trilogy Rosemary Edgehill
wrote, always readable, and always more authentic than lots of others in
this wonderful hybrid genre.)

Shadowland,
by Peter Straub
(A re-read, for possibly the 8th time?Not as good as I remember, but so many parts of me are in
this, and things I think and feel to be true for me – this was THE
book of my 20’s.I seem to have
moved on since then – but I have no idea where to or who I am currently,
so there is no book of my 30’s or 40’s to define me as yet.It’s all a confusing fog.I remember when I had a vague idea what
was going on, and maybe I will again at some point – who knows?Some days I do.)

The Gold Falcon, by
Katherine Kerr
(The series goes on and on…and I wish it would never stop.Even the less exciting parts, like this
one, are full of characters so familiar and cherished.The bit with Branna calling to Rhodry at
the end – it’s rare anything makes me cry in one line, for the lost ideal of deeply returned love, these
days.But the last book did it when
Rhodry turned; and this book did it, as I say, with one line at the
thought he might, at some point…come
home.Jeez, crying just
thinking about it.That’s powerful
writing – when you wish you were there not here.Even when here is fine.I’ve read her books ecstatic with my own
love and hope, and in the pits of disillusion – no matter where I am, I go
to where she is, and dwell there.THAT is the
purpose of writing, to poach people’s consciousnesses, and have them live
in yours – true communication, the receiving of a clear vision of some
else’s mind.Never alone,
with people all around, all of whom you understand, even if you do not
like.The world only makes sense
through stories.Even if one day,
my need to pattern may backfire on me.)

The next step on whatever path books…

Living Wicca,
by Scott Cunningham
(On the whole, a very reassuring read, in that I liked his clear and
informal, simple tone.I liked
being told, just because others say this is the only way or contradict one
another, doesn’t mean you have to do it this way.There were several very nice turns of
phrase for invocations and small rituals, that I would like to borrow.Then I was rather put off by his saying
the goddess and god ‘are deities and bigger than us’, created everything,
and other rather Christian turns of phrase though he was clearly not friendly to Christianity.(As you know, I couldn’t give a stuff
whether the world was ‘created’: it’s what you do here that counts.And the HOW of evolution is fascinating.)I liked and disliked the fine line he
walked between telling you to follow your gut (and ‘pray’, rather than
meditate on, or some less Christian –like buzzword), and you DO have to do
this or that thing, or else ‘you’ll be inventing a new religion’. To which I wanted to say, ‘Yes, and?If I do, it means ‘traditional’ Wicca
wasn’t for me, so..?’It was
thought provoking.I also did like
his insistence that I re-examine in depth all my ideas and correspondences
etc, to make sure I have everything straight in my head should I come to
writing my own solitary Book of Shadows.He kept reminding me that I would be forming my own ‘tradition’ as
a solitary.Perhaps I just dislike
that word, and want to think of it as simply my own path, my own variant
on what other people do.Either
way, it was a read that made me think
– disagreeing with him in a way that expanded my thinking rather than
limiting it.So good.Disagreement is vital for thought
production!)

Wiccan Warrior, by Kerr Cuhulain
(Best and most down to earth Wicca/magick book I’ve read in some time.Why does he not write more often?I like his calm confident tone, his
reasonable way of talking and his sensible suggestions for incorporating
Wiccan ideas into life.I like the
organisation of the chapters; and the way the idea of being a warrior is
used not in its strictest martial sense, but in a strengthening of purpose
and sense of self way – much as the Asatru emphasis is, on similar
subjects.)

Traditional Witchcraft for Urban
Living, By Melusine Draco
(This was a funny read for me, as she was a very opinionated writer, and
full of ‘what a real witch
does’, as opposed to a…new agey pretend one.,I get bored of all the division in the
pagan world.No, that’s inaccurate
- let me re-state: I think its very healthy there are tons of different
flavours in the pagan world, but I get fed up with some of them always
doing down other ones.Live and let
live if no harm is being done!Anyway, despite the fact I found her a bit contentious, amazing
things happened to me while I was reading the book, directly relevant to
what I was reading – so it seems the material resonated with me, despite
her annoying, at times, tone!It
was during this book’s reading I found my magickal name, after over 10
years of looking for it, for example.She helped me see that it was right in front of me.Also, right when I was reading about a Witches Pouch, used for
strength and protection, I found a very relevant thing for mine, in the
garden.It was all nicely
serendipitous.So I will read more
of this annoying, opinionated woman, and see what happens next.)

If you’re thinking this was an odd and arbitrary selection of
books – it’s true.The year is only half
gone, I have loads more.My magical and
pagan and nature bookshelves burst, with their contents all crying out to me,
all wanting to be read right now.My
Santeria, Heka, Hellenism, Hoodoo, Voodoo, Feri sections…all that relevant social
history stuff…so many stories…

If you wonder where the shamanism or Druidry was in that
selection, remember I just finished the Bardic Grade of OBOD – so its been
there all along, lived every day – just in something I’m not counting as a book
(though I did, ehem, read it all, all the many many moons of it…).

Also – it takes, and I am only exaggerating a teensy bit
here, hundreds of years to read and learn through the Norse and
Germanic lores…I have been reading the Prose
Edda for 4 months now, around other things!And I think I will be reading that and Beowulf and various others of the Lores, for many months to come! I am becoming very fond of Thor.

Lastly, what I’m not including here, partly out of
embarrassment, I spose – is my obsessive devouring whole of the wonderful English annuals and
comics of Misty (in particular) this
year.Anyone who used to read Misty as a
girl knows you got an awful lot of supernatural/paranormal/pagan notions in
there…And I’ve always been a great believer in returning to the things of
childhood to regain a simple understanding of things that have become unnecessarily
complicated by people’s personalities and baggage, as adults.

A friend once read my horoscope and summed me up in a sentence.She said: ‘You go forward by going backward.’Yup, that’s me.I will always go back to fetch things I
forgot if I think they are still likely to be useful.New things, old things: all can be helpful.

I have never read Touching The Void, Joe Simpson’s
1988 account of clambering, crawling, and hopping down a snowy Peruvian
mountainside with a broken leg. It was recommended to me, by someone whose
recommendations I generally trust, but for some reason I never got round to it.
Today I learned, via the Grauniad, that the book has become a set text for
teenpersons in our self esteem ‘n’ diversity hubs. I was startled, as I had no
idea they were still encouraged to read. It was not this revelation, however,
that was the point of the story. Rather, it was that various scallywags have
been conversing with Simpson through the medium of Twitter. All this social
networking and internettery can bring writers and readers together, you see.

(As I know myself. In a fit of madness, I once sent an email
to Alain De Botton to berate him for not knowing the difference between deprecate
and depreciate. He replied, the sensitive soul, within about thirty
seconds, to protest that he did know the difference, and went into a
lengthy and convoluted justification of his misuse. I was not convinced.)

Anyway, I am afraid I must report that, rather than taking
the opportunity to applaud Joe Simpson for his valour and grit and gumption,
the teenpersons have been whingeing at him. Much of this is not worthy of
comment, but I have to applaud the youngster who coined the term “crevasse
wanker”.

Now I tend not to use the language of the gutter myself, not
from any sense of prudery, but simply because I consider it a bit lazy. I once
knew a man whose every single utterance included at least one “fuck”, and
usually more. It was very tiresome to listen to him, and after a while one
wanted to stuff a rag into his mouth and have him whipped out of town, as they
might have done in an earlier, less barbarous age. Or perhaps I mean more
barbarous. If so, it would suggest that a certain modicum and type of barbarism
is actually a good thing. I must ponder that.

Generally speaking, the rarer the fuckery the more effective
it is. Pansy Cradledew, for example, a woman of great elegance and grace, lets
rip with a “fuck fuck fuck!” about once a year, on average. So unexpected is it
that jaws drop, glass tumblers shatter, and birds fall stone dead from the
skies. Ms Cradledew’s last outburst, at some point in the year of Our Lord
MMXI, was occasioned by some finicky faffing with thin strips of cardboard and
adhesive paste in the course of constructing a cardboard model of an important
building. She was not using the proprietary paste known as Cow Gum. Perhaps
that is what caused the sudden fuckery.

If one must swear more often than annually, then I think one
should at least approach the task with mad creativity. The baroque flights of
sweary fancy in the scripts of The Thick Of It are a model here, but I
think it is no accident that they are, precisely, scripted. Few of us could
come up with those verbal fireworks spontaneously. The sadly-unnamed Twitterer
who called Joe Simpson a “crevasse wanker” belongs, I think, in Malcolm
Tucker’s company. It is a phrase of genius. I only wish I could think of
occasions when I might use it myself.

Knowing not a jot about Joe Simpson, and not having read his
book, nor seen the film documentary which was adapted from it, I have no idea
if he deserves to be called a crevasse wanker. But without for one moment discounting
the valour, grit and gumption of those who pit themselves against nature’s
terrors – mountains, oceans, uncharted territories, polar wastes – there is
something faintly laughable about the whole business, is there not? I have read
more widely in the accounts of Simpson’s predecessors in earlier centuries, and
part of the pleasure, if not most of it, is in the contemplation of the sheer
foolishness at large. The following quotation, very dear to me, seems to sum up
an entire ethos. In Ex Libris : Confessions Of A Common Reader (1998),
Anne Fadiman writes

Who but an Englishman, the legendary Sir
John Franklin, could have managed to die of starvation and scurvy along with
all 129 of his men in a region of the Canadian Arctic whose game had supported
an Eskimo colony for centuries? When the corpses of some of Franklin’s officers and crew were later
discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind
their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a
backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a
copy of The Vicar Of Wakefield. These men may have been incompetent
bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.

Incompetent bunglers, gentlemen, and very probably crevasse
wankers. It is a term we can also apply to the doomed Scott and his chums,
perishing at the South Pole a hundred years ago. I am beginning to think it
would make a splendid title for an anthology.

Incidentally, does one have to be British to be a crevasse
wanker? Perhaps I am blinkered, but somehow certain foreign persons seem less
preposterous when pitting themselves against the etcetera etcetera. For
example, Werner Herzog’s various forays, and accounts of others’ forays, into
inhospitable wildernesses are, to be sure, ridiculous, but there is a mad
grandeur about them. Could Aguirre, The Wrath Of God be retitled Aguirre,
The Amazonian Jungle Wanker? I think not.

***

(~this post was up on the immortal and wonderful Hooting Yard website
yesterday.It made me wet myself with giggling, so I thought to do the same joyful thing for you. Aren't we lucky he let me borrow to put here for you? Do go to the website and be
entertained and wiping your eyes from tears of laughter, for the rest of the
day. Find it in my blogroll. Thank me for discovering this for
you, later, preferably with cake, chocolate or girls comics from the 70's or very early 80's…)

I had a week’s internet
outage, courtesy of Virgin Media; Stanley had a health scare (that warranted a
worrisome short time in hospital, he’s better now); and then I (not to be
outdone of course) had one too – that will go on much longer and probably not be sorted
for months.(I win, she says glumly.)I’ll no doubt bother you all with this latest
health scare sooner rather than later; but not now.Not today.Today I am catching up on my lackage of posts this month.

Today, here are some more writing
exercises.It’s my favourite, my literal
favourite, and you’ve read me do these ones before.Just pick a load of random words – concepts,
things, emotions, whatever.Write your
list, and then image away.Just see what
comes to mind.A scene, a feeling, a
speech, a tiny flash fiction – you get it.And then, if I like any of them, I can use them later, incorporate them
into something else.Or re-write them.Etc.So
here are some.Little flashes of nowt in particular.

More postage in a minute…

Mary

…often cursed her dead mother.A consequence of living with lots of old
Catholic women, was that Mary was often compared unfavourably to the Blessed
Virgin.Mary was neither dressed in a
pale blue robe, meek, nor blonde.She
had dark curly hair that she kept cut short, and she felt angry a lot of the
time.She held her head up and looked
people in the eye, always.She wore
black as it felt like limitless space and possibility to her.She never felt meek.

Sorrow

I carry my sorrow with me, as a stone in my pocket.Some days it swells and I have to get it out
and hold it in my hands, to stop it tearing my clothes and making me fall
over.Looking at it magnifies it, but
also makes it manageable.Some days,
like today, it is but a small piece of gravel in my shoe somewhere, I can barely
feel it.

Joy

…is the blue sky overlaid with a heavy lace of clouds, and green
leaves shaking and straining against the branches of the cherry tree.Caught by wind, caught by nature, caught here
on earth but waving at the sky.All
possibility is within those things: all possibility here and now and always,
all at once.Joy stretches through me
and runs light like a cat, quick through my garden, heavy as a bee dusted with
pollen, drunk and greedy.

Blue

…as the walls of her last bedroom: a sky blue, a stretch out
forever blue.The whole room looked much
bigger, the bed a white clean plumped up haven on a sea of calm.

Mug

Amanda knew her mum would love the Royal Wedding mug, even
as she ‘tsked’ at the £9 Waitrose was charging for it.At least it said ‘Kate and William’ and not
‘Kate and Wills’ – which would have made it sound like a marriage between a
human and a dog.It was an ugly mug
though – strange toby jug style with a flat disc at the bottom to stop it
falling over, and a large lip around the top.An over stylised handle.Lots of
beige, and badly transferred gold leaf.Still.Her mum would love it.

Skirt

When she saw it in the charity shop, she knew it was the
kind of skirt that provoked dreams of another life.Chiffon, deep dark red, and cut A-line on the
bias – it would swirl, demanding dancing.She stopped, ignoring the rain, ignoring Ben in his buggy craning round
crossly and starting to yell, as she stared at it and calculated the damage if
she bought it (approximately one nights dinner for herself). She allowed
herself a vision of dancing at a fairytale ball – something Viennese, echoes of
the seventeenth century, Robin dancing with her, his hands heavy round her
waist and shoulder.He would look into
her eyes (while wearing his own brilliant flouncy shirt), and she would feel a
click of completion.She escaped the
rain, and went into the shop.

(Four months later, the skirt lay in her wardrobe, with some
others.She hadn’t been quite able to do
up the zip and didn’t want to break it trying.She was telling herself she was dieting into it; whilst sitting
downstairs and eating her daily bar of Dairy Milk.)

Shoe

When she had heard the story of Cinderella, she had thought that if a girl was to wear a glass
slipper it would turn her to glass.Why
would it not?A perfect shoe, unmoving,
ungiving, no humanity could wear that
– so to slip in your foot (which would try so hard to spread a little, to find
comfort), would of course turn you into a glass person.It was the only explanation.Otherwise the glass slipper made no
sense.Penny liked things to make sense,
and modified the story each time she heard it.Of course, this meant that she changed the story entirely from the
moment Cinderella got dressed.

John

…worried that if he didn’t start writing soon, he would just
die and that would be that.It was bad
enough to have imaginary conversations with one’s biographer one’s whole life
(and now be 70), without having achieved a single biography worthy action or
consequence.But to simply die and still have achieved nothing?He coughed again, feeling the gurgling phlegm
rising again.He went to the toilet to
spit.Chromic Obstructive Pulmonary
Disease wasn’t anything romantic like typhoid (no La Boheme here), but it was still a slow death sentence to an unfit
man of his age who had also had 2 previous heart attacks.He sat again at his desk.His fingers waited over the keyboard.He thought about bravery, and time.

Wednesday

…was the worst day of the week.Monday had a horrible inevitability about it.
Tuesday meant Monday was over, there was almost a lightness to it.Thursday meant the end was in sight, Friday
just had to be endured, though with small pockets of joy.The weekend was when life got actually lived.Wednesday was adrift in the middle –
Wednesday really was work.Wednesday was a long day.

Car

A car was what you did
when you didn’t have a horse, Carly thought, with joy.She sped along the field, feeling the amazing
sense of Kelt beneath her, an engine, a breathing passionate welding to
herself.She felt the wind in her hair,
felt the clods of earth torn loose by his hooves spray out.In the corner of her eye, between gasped
breaths, she saw cars slide smoothly along the A-road.They had carved a path, they had their
straight lines.But Kelt: he could
practically fly.

Coffee

In the morning, after the honey cheerios, came the one and
only thing that would weld her to the day: coffee.A plain and cheap instant coffee, made
interesting (and palatable) by 3 teaspoons of diet hot chocolate.She held it to her face, cupping the mug with
both hands, to feel its warmth and energy.She smelled its curling sweetness.Then drank it down in 3 or so mouthfuls, ingesting it like the drug it
was.

Newspaper

Newspapers were things that annoyed her on the tube.Broadsheets spread and flipped in her face by
self important men with no sense of space.They were also responsible for a lot of worry and angst under the guise
of education.Phoebe opened her novel and
felt superior.I might be reading fiction, she thought, but I’m not being depressed by it; I’m being inspired.She lowered her head and surrendered her
consciousness to the story, blissful.

Garden

It was her first
garden, and she almost didn’t want to touch it or do anything with or to
it.It grew and grew – brambles in the hedge,
the hedge sprouting messy tall shoots, and bumping out at the sides, like a fat
man with a huge beard.The lawn became a
meadow with a random self seeded sycamore shooting out from the top left hand
side.She watched the grass wave and shy
in the wind, hypnotised.Then David
mowed it and all at once it was tidy and that was amazing too.The mad borage and comfrey infestations
fought with strong stemmed thistles and giant poppy plants all around the
edges; but the lawn was stripy and calm.

Child

The rosebuds were
all neat children compared to their overblown and floppy mothers: red and
curling outward so much their scarlet petals dripped one by one to the
ground.So open they fell apart.

Library

Upstairs in the old
Law Library in Senate House, Anne looked out over everyone.She sat, with a comforting tower of books
barring her from the stranger at the next table, and watched the studious
below.Heads bent over their books,
highlighters and orderly pages stapled together.She returned herself to her own work, seeing
a similar collection of highlighted notes, tidily pinned together.I
belong here, I work too, she thought.A soft smile warmed her, her bent head shielded by hair.Alone in a collective hush of learning.

Love

Seeing someone look
at you, and knowing that if you turn up your mouth and let your feelings of joy
at seeing them flow to your eyes, you will see it mirrored back to you: this is
one form of love.

Winter holiday

The idea of a
frozen landscape, a captured white.Steps cracking and crunching a path through silent trees holding still
with cold.Seeing far into the forest
and confusing the horizon for the ground.The idea was to come here for quiet, for isolation.With a puff of vapoured breath on the air,
you realize with a chill: there is no one
here but me.

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Alias True went for a walk yesterday, in the amazing sudden sun, and took loads of pics and sent me some (this and the one at the end are examples). All his pics are lovely, he has a good eye. I was totally caught by the blue, just gazing on, forever. The pastel little huts, the scrubby green. That darkish sand. See, I have been feeling very seaside-y this week and last. It’s been creeping up on me.

After those 3 posts on feeling sad and talking about my dad, I felt a bit of blog fatigue. I had tried to make those posts good, and real, and relevant (to myself and whoever else may feel them helpful), and I had to push them out in a very quick time frame because of when I was actually supposed to be on the Eric Maisel blog tour thingy – the last day, the 3rd post day.

So much was I concentrating on this and being quite single minded that I bit into my bagel for lunch on the Wednesday (my last day of any babysitting before the 3rd post had to be up on the Thursday, so I had to write then); and almost didn’t notice the pain when a tooth broke in half and fell out. I did however have to pay attention to the blood dripping on the keyboard…My number one thought was ‘bloody hell, I’m going really well, I don’t have the time or the money to go to the dentist right now! TSK!’ Of course, I did have to go. So I took the Eric Maisel book with me, determined to carry on quote mining as I waited, increasingly jellylike, in the dentists waiting rooms, to be caused pain and financial inconvenience.[1] I felt most existential indeed as they drilled away and rebuilt a bit of the tooth, saying ‘that’ll last you a couple of months, but you really should…’ etc etc. How brave of me to deal immediately with this ‘fact of existence’, and to not shilly shally about because I am phobic about dentists. Bravo, me!

I had a different fact of existence the next day though, a harsher one. Fry visited, at my insistence. He was sposed to come up in the car and bring with him something mum had forgotten when she went back home the day before. I insisted he stay the day and be fed pizza, and hang out with me, as I don’t hardly see him at all now, what with his warehousing jobs, and living so far away. I made us go out in his car because Lil Fluffhead loves cars. So off we went to the enormous nearby Tescos to stock up on Honeynut Cheerios and suchlike. We had a stupid incident in the car park just as we were about to leave, where we were faffing with putting Fluffhead’s pushchair away and fitting it with difficulty in the boot, and I put the car keys down; followed by Fry shutting the boot door and realising we had effectively shut the keys in the car. A good start, really. I had left Fluffhead’s door open, as I wasn’t finished giving him things to nibble on the way home. So I snaked into the back that way and Fry put the back seats down so I could feel about in the boot for where I had dropped the keys. All sorted. He was a bit cross with me. I was contrite and offering of chocolate buttons. All strapped up, off we went again.

On the way out of the only exit, I was chatting away and singing to Fluffhead, and Fry was murmuring about a lorry waiting for us to go, because he’d been there for ages, pausing. ‘Yes, he’s definitely letting us out’, he murmured away to himself. I was conscious of a large beige thing in the side window. ‘Hmmmm,’ I said, vaguely, not a car driver, so only being polite. We turned into the traffic, and within a second, there was quite the most astonishing sound. A grinding of metal, hissing and groaning, right by my right ear. We shunted up onto the pavement, something I didn’t see, only felt, as the minute the noise started – so LOUD – I had closed my eyes completely and was waiting for it to be finished. It’s odd, as I had no consciousness that were having a car crash – only that we were being taken over by a much larger force than us: the metal grinding noise source was definitely in charge of the event.

After another couple of seconds it stopped. Fry was saying ‘oh shit’ very loudly, Fluffhead was crying very loudly and I was turning round to get him, all at once. ‘I can’t get out,’ Fry said, in a voice simultaneously panicked and angry. I then saw the lorry. Completely mashed against the side of us, and Fry’s door bent inward a bit. I turned to my side door and saw that I could open it a couple of inches but only that, as a large lamp post was in the way. Fluffhead roared. It wasn’t clear if he was scared (which you would think), or whether he was simply reacting to our sudden fright (which they do, do small children – they mirror your reactions to things often). Or whether, as I later realised, he was mostly extremely angry that we had stopped, and weren’t moving any more, and he really didn’t understand why – he loves cars like you wouldn’t believe. He fought to get back in it and be strapped into his car seat again.

Strange, all of it, ‘cos I didn’t feel scared. I felt immediate, that’s all. The lorry driver appeared in front of us: an initially scary figure, a young man with an ‘oh for fecks sake!’ angry expression, and a knitted hat pulled down low on his brow. (He actually turned out to be a total sweetie, he was from Rumania, and working to send money home to his family there, he was kind and concerned.) I gestured to him that we couldn’t get out, and could he go round and open Fluffhead’s door and get him out. He saw immediately the need, and very quickly got Fluffhead out. I didn’t establish it, but he must have had children; or taken great care of his siblings or somesuch, as the man was a natural with children: the way he instantly grasped and confidently soothed Fluffhead, who though mightily surprised to be suddenly held by a stranger, looked at him and judged him ok, and though he carried on yelling at the mightiest of roary volume, did not also struggle.

I managed to snake out through the back (an odd hark back to not 10 minutes previous, when I had been squirming in the back for the keys). Fry did the same, and then went round the bit where the car was melded to the lorry and gestured at it, almost in tears. That may sound dumb, as in we were all fine; but he works minimum wage jobs – that car is how he earns his living and gets to the remote places he works in the countryside, where he lives. Places the buses don’t go. He was looking at the end of his income. And it has worked out that way. He has lost all his jobs. The car is history, what with one side being mashed in, and Fry only being able to afford Third Party insurance; he’s a minimum wager.

The lorry driver gave me Fluffhead and moved the lorry, which occasioned another shunting of the car, and another loud grinding sound. The wheel on the drivers side fell off, with all its concomitant bits. The wheel on the passenger side at the front practically did the same, being so ground into the kerb that it had bent double. Lots of other bits of metal littered the pavement and the road. A rather wonderful man from Lithuania came over at this point, and offered me some of his energy drink, I forget which one. This nameless person hung about for a good half hour, giving me a pen, some paper (sad excuse for a writer I am – I couldn’t find any paper and my only pen didn’t work…), and loads of moral support. He just stood about in case of need and made encouraging faces at me a lot. He had hardly any English, but the man was kind and reassuring. He took off his jacket and draped it over Fluffhead, who shrugged it off as it smelt of Not Us, and he was a bit freaked out. He stopped his wailing pretty soon, as I hugged him loads and didn’t put him down, and kissed him and rocked him and spoke in a normal voice to Fry and everyone else. As I calmed; he calmed. Soon I got Fry to get the pushchair out of the boot, and I strapped him in to that, so I could have free arms (Fluffhead, at two years and three months, is a heavy bean now).

And that’s that really. We stood about for 2 hours whilst it got increasingly cold, an hour waiting for the police to come (the car had created an obstruction in rush hour traffic, just at the only exit point of the Tescos), and then another hour trying to get insurance details from the lorry drivers company. This was all complicated by his being an agency employee, not a permanent member of staff. At one point I asked him what he thought had happened. He said he had let a woman out before us, but hadn’t seen us. He said he was sorry. I said we were sorry too. We don’t remember a woman before us. But it doesn’t matter in that the insurance company, well into its own faffing now, says that bar any CCTV footage within the lorry (apparently a lot of them have CCTV now, in case of accidents), Fry will get the blame as he was the one turning into traffic, and regardless of how long the lorry driver paused.

Fact of the matter was, we were all fine; Fry’s livelihood has vanished and there isn’t another one on the horizon, he’s back on Jobseekers and ‘he’s rather down’ is an understatement. I wasn’t capable of any objective or existential or any kind of balanced thinking about all this for a few days. Along with my blog fatigue from those articles, I suddenly had absolutely nothing to say. I was a bit obsessed with trying to help Fry. I felt massively guilty for getting him to visit me, and being the cause of the outing that lost him his jobs. With no money to give him, no car to lend him, no contacts with which to get him another job/s, or the possibility of any, I ended up being on a mission to find the car itself. The police had towed it away (as Fry’s insurers were helpfully closed when we called them at 5.30 p.m. that day to arrange for a tow), and seemed remarkably unable to tell us where they had put it. After 4 days, I succeeded, and with a flourish gave Fry the number of the towing company who were storing it. (Turns out these people have a wonderful scam running where they charge you double whatever the police said the tow would cost, plus £20 per day storage for the car. They say when you call that they can’t take payment over the phone, only in person. If you crash out of your area and have gone home, and then have to pay train fees to come up; it starts to cost. They also say the bill is in the post. Of course, it doesn’t come. These £20s are building up from the moment they get the car, so they can busily not send you the bill for a month, by which time – it would be over a thousand pounds…Anyway: you tell them of this iniquity, and they say your other choice is to sign the car over to the Metropolitan Police, for scrap. Then you pay no tow, no fees at all. They give you quite the proposition. It’s no option at all, unless the car is a limo and really worth saving. If you’re a minimum wager – it’s really no choice at all. This is all legal, amazingly. So I found the car, only for more frustration, followed by Fry’s losing it anyway.)

It took a few days to get all this squared in my head. (Fry still isn’t square at all, but obviously not; he’s a lot more affected by it, than me.) For a while there, I went into a nice cottony vacuum (when I wasn’t being very irritable). I looked out of the window when Fluffhead slept and just observed the clouds and the rain (what a lot of rain we are having, for a month now – definitely the Biblical 40 days and 40 nights period has been passed…). For a couple of days I had constant odd flashback like experiences, where it felt like every second I was still in the car, still hearing that grinding sound, feeling the shunt. Constant replay. Then that started to fade. The other day I went back to the Tescos and looked at the place where we crashed. I found a bit of the broken wing mirror on the ground and brought it home. I felt sorry for the car, all hurt and then suddenly abandoned, and not farewell-ed properly. (Yes, you know me; I think everything is alive, including man-made things – why wouldn’t they be?)

I don’t have any great message of coping as a result of this post, by the way. That’s not the way this story segment goes. It’s just some things happening. That’s it. They happened. After a while, I felt a bit better about them; partly because I am trying to think clearly, and partly purely because they are further away. And because Fluffhead is fine. Fry is very not fine in one way, and fine in another. In the here to not feel fine way.

After a while, I was seized by a fit of…relaxation. I finished my Bardic Grade, for OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a UK Druidry org, on the web here), and passed a point where something I had been doing for 3 years ended. (It has been the only course about anything I have actively doing since Fluffhead's birth.) I had thought that the Bardic Grade would never be over, and had become cross with it many times. But as I sent in the Review, and realised I was done, I had one of those odd moments where things shift and you realise you actually learnt a lot. I am waiting for info about the Ovate Grade to come now, to see if I will go on and do that (if I can afford it, I will.) That, coupled with the fact I had no intention of blogging for a bit, meant I was free in the moments I got, to relax. I found 3 amazing channels on Youtube, where some lovely people have uploaded their entire collections of hard to find late 70’s and early 80’s horror films, of cinema and TV. I found another of Hindu chants. I drifted off.

I rediscovered my collections (I am a one for collecting this and that in an unashamedly nerdy way) of UK Girls 70’s and 80’s Annuals and Summer Specials and comics. I started re-reading my Misty’s. My Tammy’s. My Jinty’s. I slipped into these simpler worlds. I had a really strong sensation of being on a beach, in the late 70’s, on a large li-lo, sucking on a Strawberry Mivvi ice-lolly, and listening the gulls in the distance overhead. Getting snatches of my dad’s tobacco smoke wafting past, its sweetness mixed with Malibu sun cream and coconut smells. The flap of the windbreak, since when was it not gusty on the beaches? The yells of small children paddling. The sun on the page making it difficult for me to read, even with sunglasses on. Feeling myself quite the little woman (about 10!). Wearing a very natty little brown bikini with gingham lacy trim. Mum constantly covering up my legs in case I burned (as I did tend to do). Dogs running past, kicking up sand; it sticking to my arms, where I had always rubbed in too much cream. Me watching the sand on my arms, its glinting golden quality. Mum saying she’ll go to get tea, do I want to come. And sometimes, I remember, I would leap up, brush myself off, and put my little orange frilled skirt on, and my flip flops (I can’t walk in them anymore, don’t know when I lost the knack), and take her hand and shuffle off with her, through the sand, so warm and dry and lovely. Shushing shushing, like the waves. And other times, I would say no, and flop over and feel the air on my now sweaty stomach, and watch the clouds in the sky. My dad would read to me, something from the book he was reading, or I’d hear the flint of his lighter going, as I closed my eyes, and allowed myself to drift. Gulls, children shrieking, bags zipped, unzipped, the waves in the distance…

And that feeling has stayed with me. The spaciousness of that time, and that place. An archetypal English type beach is where I am. So peaceful. I will stay here a bit.

[1] It should be noted that I broke the tooth at 3 – by 4.30 I was at the dentists in town; the NHS is not to be sneered at – it cost be £17.50 I didn’t have, but it could have been a shiteload worse. Apparently I need a crown, but I really don’t have the money for that; plus: one gold gangsta style tooth is quite enough for me to be going on with. I’ll need a fake diamond in it, really, if I get another…just so I can mock myself in the mirror, correctly.)